Challah Fail + Yummy French Toast RR

I decided earlier this week that I would make Gina’s Lightened Up Creme Brulee French Toast (whoa that’s a mouthful) for NYE breakfast to spoil Nathan. He likes to have sweet breakfast stuff. When he makes breakfast it’s usually a dutch (baked) pancake, regular pancakes, or french toast, and he is perfectly happy with a bowl of sugary cereal. I’m more of a savory breakfast person. I usually go for breakfast burritos and frittatas.

The french toast recipe calls for challah bread, so I figured I’d try my hand at making that too! Unfortunately, the bread was a major fail! I used the recipe from the Cuisinart cookbook that came with our new food processor…mostly because I wanted to play with my new toy!

We’ve needed one of these forever, but didn’t manage to allocate the cash until we got some wedding money. I love all the great cooking stuff we got for our wedding!

Anyway, the challah didn’t rise. At all. So I’m not going to post the recipe. I will, however, keep trying, likely with a different recipe. I’ll definitely post a recipe when I have success!

Here’s how it looked at the end though.

The braiding wasn’t too bad, I think I might try to do a 6-stranded braid next time though! I didn’t see the point this time since I knew the bread was already an epic fail.

Don’t forget this is a recipe you put in the fridge overnight, so prep it the night before!

It starts out by melting up some brown sugar and pouring it in the bottom of the pan. I had a few crunchy pieces that didn’t want to melt, but it turned out just fine!

Next you layer in the challah, squishing it to make it fit. Pour the egg mixture over the top. Then cover the pan and put it in the refrigerator overnight.

In the morning, take it out and let it sit on your counter while the oven preheats to 350. Gina says to let it come to room-temperature, but I wasn’t really worried about that. Then bake it, uncovered, until the edges are golden, and the egg is set. Gina recommends 40-50 minutes, and mine was pretty spot-on.

Then portion it out, and enjoy! We added a couple of Jones Natural Light Sausage Links (our favorite), and Nate had some maple syrup, but I didn’t feel that it needed syrup.

We absolutely loved this recipe! It’s easy, has a reasonable P+ value for a weekend breakfast (not that Nate cares), and is delicious. We did decide it would be better with non-fail challah, so I might just pick up a loaf next time. Definitely adding this to our rotation!

If you have leftovers, which we did, I recommend reheating them in the oven so they don’t get soggy. I just popped my Pyrex back into the oven at 350 the second day until it felt heated through. I think it was about 20 min.

I guess it’s time to call my pastry-chef sister and get some yeast tips! Or maybe I should just stop by and visit that ridiculously cute nephew of mine.